Investigation: Who Wrote the Psalms?

Open a Hebrew Psalter and many psalms begin before the poem does. "A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son" (Psalm 3). "Maschil of the sons of Korah" (Psalm 42). "A Prayer of Moses the man of God" (Psalm 90). These lines are the superscriptions. In Hebrew Bibles they are counted as verse 1, so that the Hebrew and English verse numbers often differ by one.

The headings are ancient: the Greek translators of the 2nd century BC already had most of them, and the Qumran scrolls preserve many. But they are not signatures. The commonest form is mizmor le-David, and the little preposition le- is the whole question.

The Bible's own picture of David is musical. He soothes Saul with the lyre (1 Samuel 16:23); he laments Saul and Jonathan in a poem (2 Samuel 1:17–27) and Abner in another (3:33–34); 2 Samuel 22 is a full psalm that reappears as Psalm 18; his last words call him "the sweet psalmist of Israel" (23:1). Amos (6:5) mocks the rich who "invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David." Chronicles, written centuries later, makes David the organizer of the temple singers (1 Chronicles 15–16, 25).

So two things are true at once: David was remembered very early as a poet and musician, and the Psalter as we have it is a collection of many voices across several centuries. The question is how to hold both without overclaiming either.

What le- can mean

Le- is a preposition with a wide range: authorship ("by David"), dedication ("for David," or for a Davidic king), ownership ("belonging to the David collection"), and topic ("about David"). The same form appears with a musical director: lamnatseach, "for the leader," which cannot mean the leader wrote the psalm. In the Ugaritic texts the parallel l-b'l heads a tablet "concerning Baal" (the subject). So le-David is compatible with authorship but does not prove it.

Thirteen headings that place a psalm in David's life

Psalms 3, 7, 18, 34, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63 and 142 name a moment from Samuel: fleeing Absalom, Cush the Benjamite, deliverance from Saul, feigning madness before Abimelech (a different name from Achish in 1 Samuel 21), Nathan after Bathsheba, Doeg, the Ziphites, the Philistines in Gath, the cave, Saul's watchmen, the wars of Aram and Edom, the wilderness of Judah, the cave again. Many scholars think these notes were added by scribes who read the psalm alongside the stories of Samuel, an early form of interpretation. Others accept them as historical memory. Either way, they show ancient readers connecting the poems to David's life.

Psalms that cannot be David's in their present form

Psalm 137 is set "by the rivers of Babylon" after Jerusalem's fall (586 BC). Psalm 74 and 79 lament the burning of the sanctuary. Psalm 126 celebrates a return of captives. Psalm 102 prays for Zion to be rebuilt. Psalm 90 is headed "of Moses." The Psalter itself therefore contains songs from before David's time (by its own heading), from his time (by tradition), and from long after. Even some "of David" psalms mention the temple (for example 5:7; 27:4), which Solomon built; defenders of Davidic authorship point out that "house of the LORD" was used for the tent sanctuary too (1 Samuel 1:9).

Psalm 72:20

"The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended" closes Book II. Yet 18 more psalms headed le-David follow it: Psalm 86 in Book III and the rest in Books IV and V. The note probably once ended an earlier David collection, before other psalms were added after it. It is one of the clearest signs that the Psalter grew by stages. See the passage page on 72:20 for the Greek.

Jewish tradition

The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b–15a) says "David wrote the book of Psalms by the hand of ten elders": Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthun, Asaph and the three sons of Korah. The tradition makes David the editor and chief author while naming earlier voices. Medieval commentators debated further: Abraham ibn Ezra held that some psalms (such as 137) were written in the exile and that le-David can refer to a later poet singing in David's name; Saadia Gaon argued that all the psalms were prophetic, so David could speak of the exile in advance.

A Qumran claim: 4,050 compositions

The Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 (11QPs-a) contains a prose passage now called "David's Compositions" (reported, DJD IV): David wrote 3,600 psalms and 450 songs, 4,050 in all, "through prophecy which had been given him from before the Most High." It shows that by the 1st century AD some Jews treated David as the author of far more than the Psalter, and saw his authorship as prophecy.

In the New Testament

New Testament writers speak of "David" as the speaker of psalms: Jesus cites Psalm 110 as "David himself said by the Holy Ghost" (Mark 12:36); Acts 4:25 gives Psalm 2 (untitled in Hebrew) to David; Hebrews 4:7 cites Psalm 95 "in David" (the Greek heading of Greek Psalm 94 names David; the Hebrew has no heading). Some Christians take these as statements about authorship; others as the customary way of naming the book ("in David" = "in the Psalter"), as Hebrews' wording may suggest.

The Greek headings

The Greek Psalter has more headings than the Hebrew and attributes more psalms to David; some Greek headings add names absent from the Hebrew, such as Haggai and Zechariah on Greek Psalms 145–148 (Hebrew 146–148), reported in the major manuscripts. These are additions in the translation tradition, a later layer of interpretation, not lost Hebrew headings. Exact headings are a C check against Rahlfs' edition; the library's Greek (Giguet) usually omits headings.

Modern scholarship

Most critical scholars hold that the psalms were composed over many centuries (the oldest perhaps from the monarchy, some in the exile and after it), that the headings were added during collection, and that "David" became the patron of the Psalter as Moses was of the Torah and Solomon of wisdom. Many also think some psalms may preserve old royal poetry from the Judean court. Few scholars today try to name the author of any individual psalm with confidence. Conservative scholars often accept the Davidic headings as reliable tradition while agreeing that the Psalter as a whole was completed after the exile.

What can and cannot be known

Known: what the headings say in the Hebrew and Greek, that the headings are older than the 2nd century BC, and that the Psalter includes exilic and post-exilic psalms. Inferred: that collections formed in stages around named groups (Davidic, Korahite, Asaphite). Not recoverable from the evidence: the original author of most psalms, and whether any given heading records composition or association. The site therefore writes "a psalm headed 'of David'" rather than "a psalm David wrote" unless it is reporting a tradition.